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I "work" in an open office type space. My ears are filled with people on the phone or just talking about work they could do. In my peripheral vision is a collea

I "work" in an open office type space. My ears are filled with people on the phone or just talking about work they could do. In my peripheral vision is a colleague and various other movements. I'm here to do only very simple work because I can't think very deeply. Any serious work is done at home where I am many times more productive. For some work this type of setup might be fine, but for anything resembling engineering it's impossible.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
kerkeslager 9y ago
I've worked as a software engineer for over a decade and most of that time was spent in open office spaces. I am most productive in that environment. I don't doubt that you are more productive in a different environment, but it's a pretty big leap to assume that every engineer is going to be productive in the same environment. Different people work different ways, and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  The problem is, workspaces are all trending to cater to you.
- opo 9y ago
  There is pretty much overwhelming research that people are more productive and healthy at work when they have some privacy and don't have distractions. One example - a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology of more than 40,000 workers in 300 US office buildings: "...Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced 'ease of interaction' were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration." https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-open-plan-offices-destroy-productivity.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-... This article talks about some of the other research on the health effects and other effects on productivity: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-... >...and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be to apply the open office design to all environments which is hurting people. The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    > There is pretty much overwhelming research that... Okay, but general studies that lump everyone together as if everyone works the same doesn't really address the point that people have different work styles. > The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet. A mixed shared/private workspace is exactly what I've proposed elsewhere in the thread.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  Can you explain how you find it possible to think deeply about complex algorithms and data structures, or to debug code? When I do this I find that I'm essentially running programs in my head and keep a "mental stack" of what's going on. A distraction can easily break this mental stack. How do you deal with this?
  - kerkeslager 9y ago
    For me, I don't know if that's necessarily related to the workspace I'm in. Talking and other sounds around me don't distract me unless someone is actually talking to me--and that's not really different in a private office, because someone can just knock on my door. The general noise of an open workspace doesn't bother me. I get that this is not true for everyone, which is why I'm saying that different people work differently. There is a slight increase in interruptions just because it's slightly easier for someone to speak to you directly in an open workspace. But the flipside, which I gain a lot more from than I lose, is that I can address other people who might know something immediately that would take me a 15 minutes to figure out--that kind of stuff is a big time-saver. I tend to figure out what other people on my team are amenable to this sort of interaction quickly, and respectfully don't interrupt people who aren't. Of course, there are still times when I need to concentrate deeply, and then headphones go in. If that doesn't cause people to weighing the value of my time versus what they'd gain from talking to me, setting polite verbal boundaries usually does. And finally, there are always going to be distractions even if you're working in a private workspace, and all the strategies that work for those distractions work for the distractions of a shared workspace.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kerkeslager 9y ago

I've worked as a software engineer for over a decade and most of that time was spent in open office spaces. I am most productive in that environment. I don't doubt that you are more productive in a different environment, but it's a pretty big leap to assume that every engineer is going to be productive in the same environment. Different people work different ways, and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry.

s73v3r_ 9y ago
The problem is, workspaces are all trending to cater to you.
opo 9y ago
There is pretty much overwhelming research that people are more productive and healthy at work when they have some privacy and don't have distractions. One example - a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology of more than 40,000 workers in 300 US office buildings: "...Enclosed private offices clearly outperformed open-plan layouts in most aspects of IEQ (Indoor Environmental Quality), particularly in acoustics, privacy and the proxemics issues. Benefits of enhanced 'ease of interaction' were smaller than the penalties of increased noise level and decreased privacy resulting from open-plan office configuration." https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-open-plan-offices-destroy-productivity.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/science-just-proved-that-... This article talks about some of the other research on the health effects and other effects on productivity: https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-trap https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-open-office-... >...and the answer is to find a workspace that suits you, not try to apply the work environment that works for you to the entire industry. Unfortunately, the trend seems to be to apply the open office design to all environments which is hurting people. The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet.
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  > There is pretty much overwhelming research that... Okay, but general studies that lump everyone together as if everyone works the same doesn't really address the point that people have different work styles. > The best environments I have seen are when there are individual offices with plenty of open areas and conference rooms for people to meet. A mixed shared/private workspace is exactly what I've proposed elsewhere in the thread.
cup-of-tea 9y ago
Can you explain how you find it possible to think deeply about complex algorithms and data structures, or to debug code? When I do this I find that I'm essentially running programs in my head and keep a "mental stack" of what's going on. A distraction can easily break this mental stack. How do you deal with this?
- kerkeslager 9y ago
  For me, I don't know if that's necessarily related to the workspace I'm in. Talking and other sounds around me don't distract me unless someone is actually talking to me--and that's not really different in a private office, because someone can just knock on my door. The general noise of an open workspace doesn't bother me. I get that this is not true for everyone, which is why I'm saying that different people work differently. There is a slight increase in interruptions just because it's slightly easier for someone to speak to you directly in an open workspace. But the flipside, which I gain a lot more from than I lose, is that I can address other people who might know something immediately that would take me a 15 minutes to figure out--that kind of stuff is a big time-saver. I tend to figure out what other people on my team are amenable to this sort of interaction quickly, and respectfully don't interrupt people who aren't. Of course, there are still times when I need to concentrate deeply, and then headphones go in. If that doesn't cause people to weighing the value of my time versus what they'd gain from talking to me, setting polite verbal boundaries usually does. And finally, there are always going to be distractions even if you're working in a private workspace, and all the strategies that work for those distractions work for the distractions of a shared workspace.